Concert Review: Karnivool @ Roundhouse 28/03/2015

A year after the release of Karnivool latest album "Asymmetry" and the eponymous tour, Karnivool is back in Europe for the Divergence Tour, backed by British progressive metal band Monuments.

This 14 date tour covered in 2 weeks most of Europe, including Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands and finally ended yesterday at the Roundhouse, in Camden.

Now the band is heading back to their native land for the Australian leg of the Divergence tour.

I find the Roundhouse to be one of the best venues I've been to: it's really modern (reopened in 2006), has a wide stage with good visibility and the sound is usually well balanced. I also really enjoyed its architecture, combining the old railway turntable from 1846, with a New Wing housing the merch stand, a bar and an art gallery.

As a group of four from 3MS (including just one self-proclaimed metal head!) in a crowd of excited punters, we made our way into Camden. We had a few minutes to get our bearings, get a drink and take in the atmosphere - the venue that's in it made it all the more impressive. The opening act was Monuments, a British progressive metal band that changed a lot between their first demo in 2010 and their first album "Gnosis" in 2012. The lineup changes made them leave behind somewhat their initial djent sound, using more progressive elements, while keeping the depth of bass given by 7 strings drop tuned guitars.

I was nicely surprised by Monuments live performance, it took only a few seconds before the whole crowd started headbanging to the rhythm of their riffs! 

Charismatic lead vocals Chris Barretto made the whole venue jump, keeping on singing while crowd surfing. A few songs feature Chris playing the saxophone (he is actually playing the saxophone on Tesseract's song "Calabi Yau" from their latest album "Altered State"), which certainly added another dimension to their sound, while also leading the crowd to burst into renditions of "Careless Whisper".  

The rest of band has a real presence as well The bass player dreadlocks are simply majestic and the drummer jus't cannot stop smiling ecstatically.

A live performance of Karnivool is something really entrancing, probably because of the lead vocals Ian Kenny timid stage presence. There is no running around the stage or call to mosh pit, just really controlled movements, a fist clenching during the pre-chorus build-up or a hand moving according to the flow of the singing.

The rest of the band is also really focused on their part to play, it is no suprise that performing something that technical requires their full attention. It is fairly easy to notice the audience struggling to be synchronized with the rhythm changes! I am still impressed by the care and precision of the performance!

The set list was quite diverse, including hits from the different albums, such as "Themata", "Set fire to the hive", "Deadman" and the crowd favorite "New Day".

The last song was "Aeons", with its final chorus progressively building up as the drums get stronger, with the same sentence being repeated tirelessly, until everything stops in an instant, leaving only a fading echo. Simply amazing.

My only disappointment was how fast they left the stage at the end of the gig... I would have preferred a few more rounds of applause and possibly another song!

Here is photo taken during Karnivool's set: the Roundhouse really has something special!

I had already experienced Karnivool live in a more intimate setup (La Boule Noire, in Paris, around 200 people) with a somewhat more mature audience. Their previous set list was more focused on their latest album, but the songs were not unknown to the fans, resulting in a dazzling performance!